


and all of this baggage

by fraud



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Awkwardness, M/M, Mile High Club, Sexual Fantasy, thinly veiled metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-15
Updated: 2013-09-15
Packaged: 2017-12-26 16:44:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/968250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fraud/pseuds/fraud
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Arthur shrugs, watching the carousel and most definitely not the man’s face, thinking ‘well, things can’t get much worse from here.’</i>
</p><p>That's it... really.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and all of this baggage

He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t noticed the man with the distracting stubble and obscenely lush lips, making him think filthy things that involved the lavatory and his own flexibility before they had even boarded.  
  
A man with lips like that surely wouldn’t mind being pushed into an airplane lavatory, pressed up against the hard, willing body of another and told to fuck him with one foot braced on the plastic toilet. Surely he would smile and oblige, biting Arthur’s neck, his chest, as Arthur took him in, biting his own fist to keep quiet- out of respect for the others on this red eye from LGA to LAX, who might not care that someone was balls deep in his ass at thirty five thousand feet, _not_ because he liked being quiet in the least. If he could last, and if they could move at all, Arthur would find a way to twist himself around the man’s broad waist, burying his hands in sloppily gelled hair and press kisses to his jaw, to sample the stubble that had attracted him at first. He wouldn’t kiss his lips, but he’d let the other kiss him, if he wanted, however he wanted and wherever he wanted.  
  
For two hours and forty-seven minutes Arthur had been on the edge of his seat, replaying and editing their torrid- _imagined_ \- mid-flight tryst in his head, waiting for the right moment. He’d waited past the drink cart, the flight attendant asking if he needed a pillow, the reinstating of the seat-belt sign, and the jolting, rocky landing of the plane.

As the passengers exited the plane, Arthur watched the man walk past and thought,  _'black really doesn’t suit him at all.'_  He thought of getting up and saying something, squeezing into the tight flow of traffic, shuffling down the aisle just to follow behind him...  
  
Arthur hadn’t had the balls.  
  
Instead he sat there, watching the passengers file out, some peeking into the cockpit to extend their thanks, others bumrushing the door in their haste to get out. When the flow of people ebbed, Arthur collected his things and exited the plane, nodding to the stewardess who wished him a monotonous good night (he couldn’t bring himself to point out it was two thirty in the morning, and _technically_ he should have a good _day_.)  
  
Putting the man from his mind, Arthur resigned himself to finding his luggage and possibly a bagel in the process. He knew LAX like the back of his hand, it hardly took any navigating anymore.  
  
And then, there he’d been.  
  
Waiting at the baggage claim with a trolley and the brown leather bag that didn’t match his suit at all, looking bored and preemptively annoyed in the way only people who have a history of losing their luggage in transport can. Arthur stopped in his tracks, just barely resisting the jet-lagged urge to duck behind a pillar.  
  
It was a ridiculous reaction, and Arthur forced himself forward, one foot in front of the other, just barely avoiding a speedy grandmother towing a line of sleepy grandchildren behind her. Situating himself near the end of the belt, well out of the way of passerby’s, Arthur watches the unmoving belt with the shared enthusiasm of his fellow sleepy passengers. He shifts his weight and his peripheral just happens to have a very clear view of the other man.  
  
The man hadn’t looked so somber in LaGuardia, so guarded, like landing had brought him back to all the troubles he hadn’t had to deal with three thousand miles away from the city of angels. Arthur wonders what his troubles are, what he does for a living, why he’s wearing his belt so high up on his torso, and if he’s ever been to a tailor in his life.  
  
Shuddering to life, the baggage belt jolts into action, the gentle whirr-clack of the machine hushing the temperate murmur of people calling loved ones for rides, or just to check in, to assure that the plane landed safely and tell them to go back to sleep. The bags emerge after a while, as if keeping their audience of sleepy-eyed owners waiting for their appearance. Arthur’s bag is one of the first.  
  
He waits for the bag to make its way to him, first around one loop, past the other passengers who barely glance at it, and around to him, curling his hand around the smooth leather handles. Hefting it off the belt he checks the tag for his name and holds it by his side, watching the luggage do its slow, curving dance around the carousel. The man hasn’t claimed anything yet.  
  
This is his only bag. There is no reason for him to be here any longer and yet... here he is.  
  
People slowly trickle out of baggage claim, tottering off with their overstuffed luggage to their untold 3 am destinations. The line of luggage seems never ending and Arthur can’t help feeling creepy standing there with his only bag, waiting for a passenger he’s been fantasizing about for the better part of three hours now to claim his luggage. His hand tightens on his bag, the urge to walk over and introduce himself seizing him forcibly.  
  
 _‘What the hell,’_  Arthur thinks, and strides over, apprehension twisting in his stomach like something fierce and tangible.  
  
The man looks at him before he’s even halfway to him, taking him in with a single glance and a poker face that would make a lawyer proud and now Arthur can’t back down, can’t walk away and pretend he was never going to do something brash and stupid, the only descriptors he’s ever associated with actions between the hours of 2 and 5 in the morning, because the man  _knows_. It makes the twenty-four steps over to him seem interminable.  
  
“You shouldn’t look so serious,” Arthur says by way of greeting, stopping just shy of the man’s elbow. “It’s just baggage.”  
  
The other allows his eyebrow to rise, something Arthur’s never allowed himself- if anything makes him look like a prissy bitch, its that. He smirks, like Arthur’s said something particularly obtuse and casts his eyes back to the carrousel, saying, “Obviously you don’t have as much baggage to claim.”  
  
 _Oh_.

He’s British.  
  
“Just this.” Arthur agrees, gesturing to the Louis Vuitton keepall in his hand.  
  
The man's eyes flick down to Arthur's bag, almost on courtesy; like he’s seen all of Arthur he needs to see and is only doing it to be polite. The small curve of his lips seems rueful, disenchanted. “That’s some nice baggage.”  
  
Arthur doesn’t know what to say. He’s out of his depth and this isn’t how he saw this going at all. If he were a lesser man, he’d crawl up onto that conveyer belt and let it carry him past those plastic flaps where the unclaimed luggage disappears to who knows where. He opens his mouth to excuse himself and, “I take it yours isn’t?” tumbles out.  
  
The other looks almost surprised that he’s still there.  
  
“Not nearly darling,” He says, leaning into his cocked hip more fully. “You’ll know my beaten up, battered trunks when they come through here.” He pauses and Arthur can feel the way his eyes trace his face, learning the lines of his jaw and his probably mussed hair. There’s that lukewarm smile again, curling his lips as he looks away from Arthur. “Heavy and cumbersome. Hardly worth a second glance, I’d say.”  
  
“I could, ah, help you with them,” Arthur offers, and somewhere along the line they’ve stopped talking about luggage and started talking about something else, but _what_ , Arthur isn’t entirely sure. “If you want, that is.”  
  
The man seems to consider this, watching a young woman pull her bright purple luggage from the belt. He says, “You could,” like he doesn’t know if it’s a question or a statement.  
  
Arthur has no idea what that means, its too late- or too early, to be doing… whatever it is he’s doing right now. He shouldn’t have come over here. He should have just left this as an inappropriate airport fantasy about some guy he hadn’t made a fool of himself in front of. Now… he’ll never walk through this baggage claim without feeling a vague sense of rejection and embarrassment. Wonderful.  
  
“But really, why would you want to?”  
  
Arthur shrugs, watching the carousel and most definitely not the man’s face, thinking  _‘well, things can’t get much worse from here.’_  “Because we all have baggage, and you have no right to look so good at three in the morning under airport fluorescence.”  
  
This time, the smile that curves his lips seems genuine, flashing a charming bit of crooked teeth. He makes Arthur feel like he’s said something particularly enlightened and not just the first bunch of semi-coherent gibberish that popped into his head. It curls in his stomach, warm and promising.  
  
“I’ll warn you,” The man says after a prolonged moment of evaluation that Arthur certainly didn’t sign up for. His eyes flick back to the carousel as he says, “I’m tired,” like he knows every thought Arthur had on the plane and plans to live up to them if- _when_ \- he decides to give into Arthur’s advances.  
  
“I’m just offering to help you with your bags.” Says Arthur, offhandedly enough to have the other glancing back at him, surveying his profile as Arthur watches the luggage steadily spill forth from the squared hole in the wall.  
  
The man’s eyes linger, considering, and Arthur worries maybe he’s rethinking Arthur’s intentions- which are nothing but wicked at the moment, even if he is playing his cards in all the wrong order. His eyes flick to the carousel as a huge trunk emerges from the wall, murmuring, “Right.”  
  
That slight pause is all he needs. Stepping up to a deserted stretch of carousel, encouraged by the sound of rubber wheels on cheap airport tile following close behind him, Arthur notes that there is an identical, slightly smaller trunk following just behind the larger one. He grabs the larger one and hefts it up, grunting when he finds that the thing is heavy enough to be packed with cinderblocks. He catches sight of the tag.  
  
Eames, D.  
  
Eames looks at Arthur like he knows he’s showing off by choosing the bigger trunk, and maybe he is, just a little- but then again, he might not know how to handle trunks either. He’s just glad Eames has moved the brown bag from the trolley.  
  
“This thing weighs a ton.” Arthur grouses, setting the trunk down with a labored exhale.  
  
“As proper baggage does,” Eames agrees, setting the smaller case on top of the larger one. He pats the trunks and shrugs, “A man’s got to have a nice selection of shoes.”  
  
Arthur is hit with the horrifying realization that the frumpy little leather carry-on he’d seen Eames with before probably contains the entirety of Eames’ clothes in it. He really hopes he’s wrong, but Eames just seems the type.  
  
“That’s it?” Arthur asks, gesturing to the trolley.  
  
Eames’ hand curls around the foam grip of the trolley’s handle. “I’d say it’s enough.”  
  
Presumably, this is where their interaction ends. They stand there for a moment, neither making the first move and embarrassment wells up in Arthur like water from a spring- he wants to ask the other where he’s going, if he wants to share a taxi? If he’s got someone coming to pick him up? If he wants to come back to his sparsely furnished apartment and let Arthur pull his belt off with his teeth. He should really excuse himself before the other- _Eames-_  realizes that this has become more awkward than it has any right to be.  
  
“Alright.” Arthur says, because he feels he needs to say something, before he sets off for the exit, bag in hand.  
  
“Oi,” Eames blurts.  
  
Arthur stops, turning to take the other in. He’s got that guarded look again, apprehension present in the lines on his forehead and the slight downward turn of his plush mouth. He gestures to Arthur’s bag and then his cart.  
  
“It’s a trolley for a reason, darling.”  
  
He looks down at his bag, prim and new in his hand, and back to Eames’ well-worn trunks, piled on the cart with their faded brown sides and gleaming bronze clasps. It takes too long but Arthur finally steps forward, slinging Eames’ leather carry-on over his shoulder and setting his bag atop Eames’ trunks. Eames’ bag most definitely doesn’t match with his suit either and Arthur is beginning to suspect that it doesn't actually match with anything, and that Eames keeps it for precisely that reason.  
  
“Catching a taxi?” Arthur asks, and this time when he walks, he hears the distinctive sound of rubber wheels on the linoleum floor.  
  
“Unless you’ve got a car.” Eames replies, falling into step with him.  
  
Arthur can tell Eames is trying not to look at the way his bag looks slung over Arthur’s arm. “No, not here at least.”  
  
“Cab it is then.”  
  
Arthur leads the way and slips into the backseat before he’s even thought about helping the driver with the bags. Eames is out there though, smiling with the man as he hefts the larger of the two trunks into the back of the taxi. The trunk slams shut and he slips in beside Arthur, the leather of the backseat barely creaking, well-worn from constant use. The driver asks, “Where to?” and Eames looks out the window, admiring the lights of LAX.  
  
Arthur gives him his address, and if Eames falls asleep on the drive, Arthur pretends not to notice.

**Author's Note:**

> remember when i wrote a lot of stuff for inception? yeah... good times...


End file.
